The Palestinian Minister of Awqaf and Religious Affairs, Hattem al-Bakri, stated that settlers, under the protection of the occupation police, stormed the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque 23 times, during two periods, morning and evening, last month.

Al-Bakri added, in a statement reported by the Palestinian News Agency (Wafa) today, Monday, "that the incursions by the settlers involved performing Talmudic rituals and provocative tours in the courtyards of Al-Aqsa Mosque, in an attempt to impose temporal and spatial division."

He continued: "The settlers celebrated a Jewish marriage ceremony in front of the Buraq Wall and Al-Aqsa Mosque, while the occupation authorities prevented the continuation of restoration work in the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque."

He pointed out that the occupation prevented the call to prayer 51 times at the Ibrahimi Mosque in the city of Hebron, in addition to closing it on the sixteenth of last month under the pretext of Jewish holidays, preventing worshippers from praying there, and attacking the corner and Al-Shibli Mosque in the Old City, after breaking the glass of the shrines and the mosque.

He added that the occupation and its settlers attacked the Qaytun Mosque in the Old City of Hebron by installing artificial grass, as a preliminary step to seize it and use it for the settler herds, and they also attacked the endowment lands in the Forty scene by setting up tents there.

The Palestinian Minister of Awqaf and Religious Affairs emphasized that what the occupation has been doing lately by increasing the pace of assaults on mosques and religious sites is nothing but a policy that falls under the framework of religious and ethnic cleansing, calling on citizens and all institutions to fulfill their duties to combat the occupation's plans to control the Old City.

Al-Bakri called for strengthening the presence at Al-Aqsa Mosque to confront the incursions of the settlers and thwart their plans.